A flare gun blasted into the air—Creti signaling the start of the competition. Kalter was the first to dive into the fault, but Xard was happy to let him get a head start, to really see what he could do.
Strapped to Kalter’s back had been several long and pointy things, mostly sports related. Towering over all of them had been a large lance that had been used in jousting tournaments long ago—or during festive reenactments of the event.
Kalter had thrown the lance to the ground and then straddled it with both feet. His eyes drifted to a random Starbit in the distance. The lance lurched forward, dragging for a few feet before it lifted off the ground. Kalter then soared, riding the hovering lance as it flew through the air. The lance impaled the Starbit that Kalter had assumedly been aiming at, and then the momentum slowed, but he still stayed in the air.
The lance then suddenly spun on its axis, facing the other way and it soared at a new starbit in the distance. This time, however, the lance dipped lower, trenching through the top layer of starbits, killing them all as the lance continued unimpeded towards its target. Kalter repeated this as he tore away at the layers of flesh that filled the fault. Now the lance was slithering through the waves of Starbits as it trudged without slowing.
Xard had a few opinions on this, mostly about how inefficient it was and how long it would take if Kalter kept this pace, but he couldn’t deny that he was a bit impressed. Phon had given them the full rundown on his Curse already. It was called Auto-Aim, and it mostly did as one would expect.
The Curse allowed Kalter to pick a target and then throw an object at it. Well, throw in this case was a bit inaccurate. Really, Kalter just had to touch the projectile first. The object would never miss, relentlessly chasing its target until it was struck. Even if the projectile was impeded or bashed, it would resume its hunt, only stopping if it was destroyed entirely.
This was how Kalter had become so immediately proficient at sports. Since he could just touch the ball—even through his shoes worked—and the ball would go into the net without fail. Kalter could even choose which side and a specific part of the net to prevent any weird situations where the ball could end up behind it and try to score from the other side.
Really, it had been such an unimaginative and pointless use of his Curse. That had been what had annoyed Xard so much about Kalter’s tomfoolery. All he’d used it for was to boost his own ego, failing to live up to its potential or use it for anything meaningful.
But now he showed creativity, in a way that Xard probably never would have thought of. Being able to alter the flight path that the object took showed great control of his Curse, not to mention being able to ride the damn thing. His added weight must take far more energy to make it work efficiently while still keeping it nimble.
Xard’s real praise came from Kalter’s balance. He was standing on a rounded object that was zooming around. There were no restraints to keep his feet in place, just friction. Even if he was somehow using his Curse to keep his shoes actively targeting the other side of the lance, it was just asking for a broken ankle.
Now that Kalter had made some strides in clearing a chunk of Starbits away, he pulled several javelins out of their holsters on his back. Like the lance, they flew off in different directions, skewering as many starbits as they could until they reached their destination.
This increased Kalter’s killing speed by several magnitudes. Each javelin was just as efficient as disposing of Starbits as his lance was—not that they were particularly hard to kill. Unfortunately, a drawback of his Curse was that he could not recall his projectiles to himself.
Once they hit their target, they went lifeless and limp until he touched them again. However, Kalter accounted for this by making sure the target he hit was high up and near the edge of the fault wall, meaning it would impale the rock or dirt in a way that Kalter could easily fly by on his lance to retrieve and then throw again.
“Not gonna come down here, or are you too scared to challenge me after you’ve seen what I can do?” Kalter took a break from killing after achieving a bodycount of a few hundred, slamming his lance into the wall so he could wave and yell at his opponent.
Xard pointed his finger right at Kalter’s head and sent a blast of energy. The Athlete was shocked at the attack, like Xard had just fired a gun at him without warning—which he had basically just done. But he was even more surprised when the side of his face was splattered with monster guts.
In general, Starbits were pretty docile, choosing to flee or reproduce instead of fighting back. But on occasion, one would become so bold as to throw their tentacles into the fray. Almost similarly to an octopus, Starbit limbs could extend and had far more flexibility than that of a standard starfish. So, they’d use them to attack by either constricting around their prey or just slapping them around a bit.
One such brave Starbit had taken Kalter’s break as an opportunity to strike, wanting vengeance for its many fallen kin. The attack would have barely harmed the Fiend, but Xard saved him from getting a face full of sucker. Though, what he got was arguably much worse.
Even though Xard had, sort of, just done him a favor, he wasn’t going to let Kalter’s provocation go unheeded. The Greater Fiend was going to make him choke on those words. While he could attack entirely from the air, that would be a tiring waste of energy and far more inefficient.
Still, the fault was literally bursting at the seams with Starbits, so there wasn’t exactly solid footing where he could stand. He’d just have to make some. Xard flew up above the horde to roughly the middle of their quadrant. He then let himself freefall and began to exude a shroud of kinetic energy around him—a powerful flow but with short range that dissipated after only about a foot.
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It was like a barrier to keep him protected, and it also broke his fall. But it was also a torrent of destruction, ripping through anything it touched. The starbits beneath him vanished from existence. Once his feet touched solid ground, Xard stopped holding the energy back and let it blast free.
Starbit corpses went flying in every direction, as if a bomb had been set off at his location. Pretty impressive to anyone else, but Xard was a bit disappointed. He had been trying to work on manipulating his energy so that he could control or at least curve the trajectory once it was fired.
In this case, he’d wanted to make it spin around him as if to create a swirling tornado, but that hadn’t happened. The energy had curved, ever so slightly, so that all the Starbits had all been moved a few inches to the left as they soared. Really, the energy wanted to only move in a straight line when exuded from Xard’s body, and he had a hard time making it do anything but that.
However, this was a great opportunity to test out some of the new facets of his ascended Curse. He was still planning to show up Kalter immeasurably, but he’d take his time and not waste a chance to get some proper practice. And now he had space to work with. His stunt had carved out a sizable gap in the sea of Starbits, though it was only a small dent when compared to the rest of the fault.
There had been one major change in Xard’s Curse usage since the ascendance. Before, it had been energy in, energy out. His body had only been able to contain so much at once, and having a reliable source of energy had basically been limited to his rings. On occasion, he’d receive a generous donation of energy from attackers, but it was far from being consistent.
Ever since the change, Xard had been working his rings overtime. The first few days had been misery, only able to focus on absorbing them as quickly as he could. It had literally consumed his life, but the results had paid off. Now his internal clock was impeccable.
He could know exactly when each ring would be off of its cooldown and immediately absorb it. The process was almost fully subconscious, only getting thrown off rhythm when he actually thought about it. Then, he’d have to get distracted by something else in order to get the automation back on track.
Because of all that work, the number tattooed on his arm almost looked made up. It had gotten to the point that it was starting to be hard to pronounce if he had to say it out loud, and it was only growing. Now only the biggest engines and sources of energy tucked away in scientific labs could rival him in output potential. He’d taken to calling the energy ‘Kinets’ in regards to how it reacted.
All this energy, though, didn’t exactly make Xard stronger. There was still a clear limit on how much he could expend at a time. If he tried to release too much, it’d feel like that part of his body was going to tear itself apart. The Greater was pretty sure that if he tried to release all the energy currently stored inside of him, his body would simply explode.
The positive side, though, was that Xard didn’t have to worry about running out of Kinets. Unlike before where he could only expend what he’d recently absorbed, the tank was virtually limitless. Previously as well, the energy wouldn’t want to stay in his body, so he’d have to get rid of it eventually.
But now he could just let it flow, like turning on a faucet. All Xard had to worry about was the velocity at which the energy left him. More power meant his stamina would deplete faster. But assuming he could keep up with the demand, the energy could essentially flow forever.
His bullets and explosions could now take on a new form, at least he speculated so. Xard just had to try it out, and this was the best testing grounds. He started with a single finger, like he’d use when firing a shot. Instead of treating it like a single bullet, his mind formed the picture of a laser.
An invisible beam of energy shot out. While the actual energy itself couldn’t be seen, its effects were ever present. In a line directly in front of Xard, Starbits were now missing a perfectly circular hole from their bodies for as far as he could see. He got confirmation on how far the range went when dust started blasting upwards as his laser hit the wall of the fault.
Xard turned the laser off, taking a moment to breathe since that had winded him a bit more than he expected. The drawback didn’t really last, and he felt fine to go again after just a second. He’d also kept an eye on the number on his left arm, watching it deplete as the laser had fired. The amount it had decreased could barely even count as a datapoint—basically a rounding error compared to the destruction it had caused.
He held his palm out flat in front of him, ready to take it up a notch. A hand shaped beam shot forward, stamping out any Starbits in his path like he was slapping them out of existence. The Kinets started draining from him at a wildly faster rate, but it still wasn’t something he’d have to worry about. That said, if he kept going like this, he would have to actively replace what was lost when this was all over, since he’d create a deficit.
After Xard got comfortable with one hand, he started using the other, now having two beams of death. This was definitely his current limit, having to weaken both beams slightly to account for double the capacity, otherwise he may pass out from the strain. Hopefully, he’d be able to use both in the future without incident and without feeling like zjik afterwards.
Ideally, he could fire energy from his entire body continuously at some point. That’d be the goal he had to strive towards. He'd be lying if he didn’t feel a surge of power as he witnessed his own destructive potential. It was a feeling of narcissistic superiority that he’d certainly have to reign in if he didn’t want to lose himself to it. But that was for a later date.
After using both beams for a while, Xard got the idea to put the sides of his palms together. It was often depicted in shows and cartoons that when two energies combined, they would compound into something greater than the sum of their parts. This wasn’t the case in his situation. He still had the two exact same beams, just now side by side, making the impact more square overall in shape.
Xard decided to take a quick breather after that failure to let his body recover. He didn’t feel bad exactly, almost like the high someone would get after working out, but he still felt exhausted. The chunk of energy that he’d depleted felt more noticeable than he anticipated, and replenishing it with his rings immediately made him feel better. It could become an addiction if he wasn’t careful.
After a decent rest, the Greater resumed his utter obliteration of the Starbits. He felt a bit more empathetic towards them, watching them vanish so easily, like he was erasing them out of existence. At least it was a quick death, but it certainly dampened the excitement of his new power.
To make himself feel a little better, he’d occasionally let a beam drift just a bit too close to Kalter for comfort—who had been purposefully giving Xard a wide berth since he’d joined the fray. Xard was in perfect control the entire time, but watching the panic on the face of the arrogant athlete brought a smile to his own without fail.